ETH-ZURICH

ETHZ is the only federally operated university in Switzerland besides its sister Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. ETHZ is the study, research and work place of 18,000 people from 80 nations. About 350 professors in 15 departments teach mainly in the engineering sciences and architecture, system-oriented sciences, mathematics and natural sciences areas and carry out research that is highly valued worldwide.

People:

Prof.Paolo Burlando:
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Dr.Andreas Bauder:
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Dr.Annett Wolf:
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Dr.Darcy Molnar:
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Dr.David Finger:
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Dr.Francesca Pellicciotti:
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Dr.Harald Bugmann:
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Dr.Martin Funk:
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Dr.Martin Lüthi:
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Dr.Peter Molnar:
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Ruzica Dadic:
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Chair of Forest Ecology

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The chair of Forest Ecology was founded in 2004 and is emphasizing research on the effects of Global Change with regard to the structure and function of forest ecosystems, particularly in mountain regions. It is part of the Department of Environmental Sciences, which is focusing on research dealing with the interactions between the anthroposphere, the biosphere and the atmosphere. ETHZ Forest Ecology is devoted to investigating natural patterns and processes in mountain forest ecosystems towards improving the management of these vital and often fragile systems in an era of multiple and often conflicting forest uses, including protection, wood production, carbon storage, diversity, and recreation. The group has a track record of research on (1) the anal¬ys¬is of the pools and fluxes of C and H2O at the scale of mountain catchments; (2) the interactions between climate, vegetation properties and large-scale disturbance regimes (particularly wind-throw, insect attacks, and wildfires); and (3) forest succession. The group has a strong modelling focus and was involved in several EU projects under the 5th and 6th FPs (GLO¬RIA-EUROPE, ATEAM, GLOCHAMORE, ALARM).

Prof. Dr. Harald Bugmann holds a PhD in forest ecology and systems analysis from ETH Zurich (1994). He has extensive post-doc experience in Ger¬many (PIK) and the US (NCAR) and re¬turn¬ed to ETH in 1999 as an Assistant Professor for Mountain Forest Ecology. He has pub¬lish¬ed more than 85 peer-reviewed papers and 6 edited monographs. He will supervise the postdoc (LPJ-GUESS) and will ensure that expertise and modelling results from other projects in the group will be available to ACQWA.

Dr. Annett Wolf is a postdoc/senior scientist in the Forest Ecology group, focusing on modelling biogeochemical processes in mountain catchments using the LPJ-GUESS model. She holds a PhD in forest ecology (2003) and has pos-doc experience from the EU project BALANCE, where she modelled arctic vegetation dynamics as affected by global change. In ACQWA, she will focus on the impact assessment using LPJ-GUESS and LANDCLIM.

Laboratory of Hydraulics, Hydrology and Glaciology

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The glaciology section of the Laboratory of Hydraulics, Hydrology and Glaciology (VAW) has a long tradition on outstanding research on glacier mechanics and glacier-climate interactions.

Martin Funk has been engaged in a variety of glaciological research fields and consulting works. He was involved in an international project to investigate the rapid flow of the Jakobshavn Isbrae (Greenland) in 1988, 1989, 1995, 1996 and 2007 (SNF-projects). In a collaborative ETH project with Prof. P. Burlando (PI) on ’’Effects of Climatic Fluctuations on Runoff Production and Water Resources Management in highly glacierized Alpine Basins’’, an improved distributed temperature-index model was developed. He was leader of a work-package of the EC-project GLACIORISK. The Swiss contribution in this project was a systematic inventory of hazardous glaciers in Switzerland and a study on the stability of steep glaciers. He was also engaged in various glaciological hazard problems in the Alps and is actually leading a comprehensive SNF project to study the outburst mechanisms of glacier dammed lakes involving three doctoral students.

Andreas Bauder has been working on the mechanics of glacier flow for many years. He is responsible for the Swiss Glacier Monitoring Program of length a mass balance changes in the Swiss Alps. He is actually leading an ETH project on regional differences of mass balance and their impact on the past and future evolution of glaciers in Switzerland involving one doctoral student.

Martin Lüthi has investigated the dynamics of glaciers and ice streams with both field methods and numerical modelling. He has extensive experience with borehole measurement methods. He is actually leading a SNF project on the rapid thinning of ice streams in Greenland.

Chair of Hydrology and Water Resources Management

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The Chair of Hydrology and Water Resources Management (HWRM) of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETHZ) is part of the Department of Civil, Environmental and geomatic Engineering. It has carried out extensive work in the field of hydrological modelling, with particular emphasis on precipitation, rainfall-runoff modelling, as well as flood analysis and prediction in the probabilisic domain and via simulation techniques. Particularly relevant to ACQWA is the experience with respect to climate change related hydrological investigations (e.g. Birsan et al., 2005; Perona and Burlando, 2006; Pellicciotti et al. 2007), and specifically, with respect to stochastic downscaling techniques (e.g. Burlando and Rosso, 1992); to the analysis of CC effects on basin hydrology (e.g. Burlando et al., 1999; Galimberti-Aghion and Burlando, 2000; Burlando and Rosso, 2002a; b; 2003) and on erosion (Molnar et al. 2006; Burlando and Kirsch, 2005; Kirsch et al. 2007); to glacier modelling (e.g. Pellicciotti, 2004; Pellicciotti et al., 2005; Strasser et al., 2004); and to water resources allocation under CC forcing (Alfieri et al., 2005).

Experience at HWRM-ETHZ is also available from the work carried out in the EU projects “FRAMEWORK”, which investigated the effects of land use changes and engineering works on flood risk, and “MUSIC”, which addressed the role of precipitation measurement and predictions on flood forecasting. Additional expertise of the HWRM-ETHZ research group, also useful within the interdisciplinary context of ACQWA, concerns scaling problems in hydrology, the interaction between hydrology and ecology of fluvial systems, river morphology and water resources management.

The main tasks attributed to HWRM-ETHZ fall in WP3 and are:

- co-leading of WP3, and leading of Task 3.2; - the development of a space-time stochastic downscaling technique, and its use for generating basin and local scale scenarios (Subtask 3.1.2); - the simulation of CC basin scale comprehensive hydrological scenarios by means of a distributed physically based hydrological model, which can integrate detailed subgrid models and can be coupled with water driven processes such as erosion and soil slips (Task 3.2); - the simulation of CC driven local scenarios of glacier evolution by means of a distributed continuous mass-balance glacier model, and the extrapolation of the local results to the basin scale (Subtask 3.3.2); - the investigation of effects of CC on soil slip hazards (Subtask 3.4.3).

Staff members who will be undertaking the work are:

Paolo Burlando, Professor and Chair of Hydrology and Water Resources Management at ETH Zurich leads a team that pursues a broad spectrum of research in hydrology, including rainfall analysis, modelling and prediction, flood frequency analysis, floods and water driven natural hazards, scaling in hydrology and hydrological modeling, the interaction of hydrology and ecology in floodplains, water resources from glaciated areas, and CC impact on hydrology. He has been involved in many national and international collaborative projects with leading and co-leading roles.

Peter Molnar, PhD in hydrology, senior research associate: his main research cover stochastic rainfall modelling, basin erosion and sedimentation, fluvial system dynamics, and river network studies. Most relevant for this proposal is the expertise about the simulation of rainfall fields with stochastic methods based on scale invariance theories in general, the space-time variability of hill slope sediment delivery to a stream, the spatially distributed simulation of hill slope and channel erosion/deposition.

Darcy Molnar, PhD in hydrology, has a background and a considerable expertise in distributed modelling of catchment response, thus providing the necessary modelling expertise for the new developments of existing models.

Francesca Pellicciotti, PhD in hydrology, has worked comprehensively in the field of glacier research, including extensive field work, and with particular focus on parsimonious and easily transferable distributed modelling of snow- and icemelt, and on detecting climate induced trends of glacier changes.

Ruzica Dadic, PhD student presently working on modelling of the mass-balance of apline glaciers.

In addition, a post-doc researcher and two PhD students, fully dedicated to the project, will be hired.